


Herbs on the windowsill

by lizzieraindrops



Series: Herbs on the windowsill [1]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Gen, Healing, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Orphan Black Series 02: Helsinki, Platonic Cuddling, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:05:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6795997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Helsinki happy-ending AU where everyone lived and Veera and Niki got a little apartment together somewhere. Also, they’re qpp’s. Also, Veera is aroace as heck.</p><p>Thanks to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/profile">piggy09</a> for providing the title and <a href="http://sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/post/143649143579">some great headcanons</a>.</p><p>Also posted <a href="http://lizzieraindrops.tumblr.com/post/144045617969/herbs-on-the-windowsill-2252-words">on tumblr</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Herbs on the windowsill

She wakes softly, softly, body untense. Then, her brain immediately clicks into place and sends signals screaming down her limbs to contract every muscle. The sudden contrast is almost worse than sleeping with a knot in her chest all night. (Almost.) For an instant, she felt safe: so something must be wrong, and she’d better be ready for it.  _That’s a fucked-up thought_ , she thinks. She knows.

She pries her knees away from her chest, attempting in vain to stretch back into the relaxed sprawl of only moments ago. She painstakingly sits up in her tangle of blankets, but it’s hard with the coil of fear in her gut siphoning off all the strength from her center of gravity.

“Niki?” she calls into the early morning quietness. She hates the insubstantial quaver her voice gets when it comes from high in her tight throat instead of low from her diaphragm.

“Kitchen,” a voice calls back. Veera’s shoulders drop just a little with relief. She kicks off her covers, pulls on her hoodie, and pads barefoot out of her tiny room toward their tiny kitchen. She pauses with her toes right at the threshold where the brownish carpeting ends.

The kitchen is warm with worn wooden cabinets and a south-facing window. Some slantwise sunrays are lighting up the leaves of the basil in the windowbox, a brilliant spring green. There’s a south window in the teeny living room, too. The two rooms are joined onto each other by a half-wall draped with colorful scarves and dried flowers. In the midafternoon, a cutout of sunlight lands squarely on the squashy little couch placed there specifically to catch it. Niki sleeps there like a cat: she can never get enough of the sunlight. Maybe that’s why she likes dyeing her hair such a bright gold color.

Niki glances up from the skillet she’s heating to throw a smile just as bright in Veera’s direction.

“Hey. You alright?” She eyes Veera while fluffing some eggs with a fork in a large bowl. Niki always asks. She really does want to know.

Veera shakes her head.  _No. But that’s nothing new._

Niki sets the fork down in the bowl with a  _clink!_  of metal on glass. It only takes her three steps across the cream-colored linoleum to fold Veera into an unreserved hug and lean the weight of her head against Veera’s cheek.

Veera’s chest loosens a little against the bracing pressure of the arms encircling her shoulders. She bends her arms at the elbows to hug Niki back, trying not to crush the girl with her tension and neediness. She nestles her shaggy, short-haired head against Niki’s golden one. A small sigh escapes her throat as a ghostly whimper.

Niki just squeezes her a little bit tighter. Then she gently releases her and strokes her hands down Veera’s upper arms. Veera lets her hands fall limp to her sides again and stares at the floor between them.

“Hey. It’s okay,” Niki says. “I’m here, we’re here, we’re safe.” Veera takes a deep breath and nods a few times, but doesn’t look up.

The tap of Niki leaning her forehead against her own bowed one takes Veera by surprise. She starts a little, but finds herself leaning into the contact, hard. Niki laughs a little, pushes back with the perfect amount of counterpressure. Her long hair swings into Veera’s field of vision. The ends of it flicker bright-yellow as they slice through a stray sunbeam. 

“You don’t have to talk today if you don’t wanna,” Niki says in a quiet voice. “But I found this banana pancake recipe I wanna try. Help me out?”

Veera closes her eyes and nods again, relishing the rustle-rasp of the brown and gold hairs pinned between their skulls. They linger in stillness a moment more. Then Veera lifts her head and tugs her overlong purple sleeves down to her knuckles. She steps into the kitchen to look for the recipe that Niki probably isn’t following.

Veera can’t cook, and Niki can’t bake. After a few unbearably smoky afternoons with windows flung wide open in midwinter, they have accepted these facts. But pancakes lie somewhere between the two culinary disciplines, and it’ll take the both of them to produce something edible without setting the apartment - - without causing a disaster.

Fortunately, Veera woke up in time to make sure Niki actually  _uses_  the measuring cups.

Veera takes over measuring out the flour while Niki continues to fluff the eggs. She rolls back one sleeve just so she can sink her hand into the flour bag. She has always loved the texture of it, like sand made soft.

She expertly swipes a finger across the top of the measuring cup to level the fine white powder to the correct volume.

“I dreamed about fire again last night,” Niki says abruptly, as if continuing a conversation that never really ends. Her voice isn’t heavy with dread or spiked with fear, the way it was for the first few months. Now, it’s just resigned, a little sad.

Veera pauses and turns to look at her. Though she wouldn’t dare with anyone else in the world, she reaches out and strokes Niki’s hair, just once. It’s the sort of thing Niki does, when Veera says things like that.

Niki sighs, then perks up a little. “It’s the first one this week, though, and it’s already Thursday! That’s progress, right?”

“Mmhmm,” Veera affirms.

“I wish it would quit, though.  _Ugh_. It’s not like anyone even got burnt! Well, okay, Justyna got that one on her arm, but it’s fine now, and I swear she even  _likes_  it. She thinks it makes her look more badass. And, well, I guess it does. But still…” 

Veera digs the ring of measuring spoons out of the drawer and measures out salt, sugar, baking powder. She tips them into the mixing bowl on top of the flour, little piles distinguished only by slightly different textures. She listens.

Niki’s started smashing bananas in a bowl with a fork and unwonted fervor. “It was just… so close. We all almost  _died_. It freaked me out so bad. Oh, balls,” she says as a bit of banana mush flips out of the bowl. She scoops it up with a finger and drops it back in, licking the rest off her hand.

“Anyway. We have  _got_  to have Jade come visit, she’d love it here. Has she emailed you to say when they’re letting her out of the hospital? Oops, I told you you didn’t have to talk today. Don’t answer that.”

“Two weeks,” Veera answers anyway.

Niki sticks her tongue out at her. “Great. That gives us time to plan. We should bake a  _cake_.”

Veera rolls her eyes as she blends the dry ingredients evenly with a wooden spoon. She’ll be the one who ends up having to bake whatever complicated thing Niki’s dreaming up. But really, she doesn’t mind. Not for Jade; not for Niki.

“Ooh! What about a strawberry shortcake? Jade loves strawberries. She says she remembers them from when she was little. God, what must that be like, to remember the taste of strawberries but not your own name.” Niki shakes her head. “Here, this is ready, dump it in.” She tips the well-mashed bananas into Veera’s bowl, and throws the eggs and the rest of the wet ingredients in after them. Veera just keeps mixing.

Soon, the concoction looks like something they both agree resembles the correct consistency, and Niki starts ladling scoops of it into the skillet they’re using as a griddle. The edge of one pancake slops over the side of the pan a little, but Niki won’t let Veera prod it back into the place until the batter has firmed up some. “It’ll rip! You gotta wait!” she exclaims. Veera finds one of the toothpicks she uses to test the doneness of her baked goods and pokes at it anyhow, but Niki’s right. The puffy batter on the top side of the pancake is still too gooey: it will pull apart if they try to move it too soon.

Eventually, they end up with a respectable stack of golden-brown pancakes piled high on a plate. Some are more brown than gold, and a bit weirdly shaped. However, when Veera bites into the miniature one they’d made with the last remnants of the batter, she finds that it’s chewy and moist and  _perfect_.

The two girls gravitate to the living room, now well lit by the morning sun reflecting off the wall. Niki curls up on the couch with her plate balanced in her lap. Veera sprawls on her stomach on the shaggy green rug they’d thrown down in the middle of the floor, feet in the air and ignoring the constant unease that lives as a cramp in her gut. They pass a leaf-shaped glass bottle of maple syrup back and forth, a gift from one of the Canadian sisters they’d contacted. Veera loves the unusual shape of the bottle. Once it’s empty, Veera wants to stick a plant in it: one of those trailing vines with heart-shaped leaves, the ones that put out roots when you leave a cutting in water. Those are supposedly impossible to kill. (Veera forgets to water them. Niki has to take care of their mini herb garden in the kitchen window.)

When she’s done with her pancakes, Veera stretches out flat on the ground. She lays her head down on her extended arms and watches Niki, who’s using the last bite of her own pancakes to mop up the excess syrup on her plate.

“What?” Niki says through her last mouthful of pancake, when she catches Veera staring.

Veera blinks and hides her face in the rug in embarrassment. They might call the all the others sisters, too, but Niki is her family in a way that none of the others are. Sometimes Veera remembers how close she came to losing her, and how important Niki is to her, and she can’t stop thinking about how much she cares about her, in a way that’s so different from the way Suvi does but just as intense -

“Veera, are you okay over there?”

“Mmhmm,” Veera groans into the rug. She turns her head to peer at Niki again with one eye, the other hidden behind her arm. Niki’s setting her cleaned plate down on the floor and looking at her with concern. Somehow, she hasn’t gotten syrup  _anywhere_  on her perfect face or immaculate hair. Veera must make a rather unimpressive sight, one un-made-up eye and one scarred cheek under her messy hair, hiding behind the purple sleeve of the hoodie she wears too much, laying on the floor like a weirdo.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Veera says in her smallest voice.

Niki’s face melts into a soft smile. “Come here, you weirdo,” she says, patting the couch cushion next to her. In her mouth, the potential insult turns into something harmless, like a poisonless insect with bright aposematic coloring.

Veera merely watches her for a moment more, then complies. She pushes herself up to her knees, then to standing, only to walk two steps and collapse onto the couch into Niki’s waiting embrace.

Veera curls her legs up onto the couch, too, so that they’re nestled together, knee to knee and side to side and Veera’s head resting on Niki’s shoulder like it has always belonged there. Veera tucks her toes under the warm, scratchy blanket that’s piled onto the other end of the couch.

“I’m so glad we met,” Niki says in quiet voice that Veera can feel resonating from its source.

She didn’t know it before this moment, but as she simply breathes and watches the sunlight arc across the striped wallpaper, Veera realizes that this is everything she’s ever wanted. Sure, it will probably be years before either of them can get through a day without being afraid, and she might never be completely free of that tense, unconscious fear that’s taken up residence inside her. But this little apartment and every moment they’ve filled it with is realer than the fear, and this is what matters, this is what she wants. Veera doesn’t need an Aleks or a Suvi - though Niki might, and that’s just fine. They’re not the  _same_ , after all: they’ve always known that.

Besides, Niki promised she’d never leave Veera behind again. She’s re-made that promise to her so many times now, Veera’s lost both count and doubt. First when they reunited after Gdansk at the Russian border; then once when they were hiding out in Suvi’s attic; yet again when it was all over, and the raging fires of Helsinki were nothing but quenched coals sinking cold into the sea.

“Thank you for staying,” Veera whispers.

Niki leans her head against Veera’s. “I can’t imagine leaving,” she says softly. She laces her fingers together so that her arms are slung loosely around Veera, holding the two of them together. For this moment, Veera is safe again, and her nerves are quiet. “Thank you for saving me,” Niki whispers. “Twice.”

Veera cups her hands over both of Niki’s, her fingers just peeping out of her sleeves. “We watch each other’s backs. Right?”

Veera feels Niki nodding against her head. “You got it.” Veera sighs in relief, and lets her eyes fall closed until she can see nothing but the glow of the sunlight that’s saturating everything in the room.


End file.
